Australia has become a climate change "free-rider", dropping off the list of nations taking "credible" action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to a panel led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan led the Africa Progress Panel. Photo: Reuters

In the Africa Progress Panel's 2015 report, Australia is named along with Canada, Japan and Russia as appearing "to have withdrawn from the community of nations seeking to tackle dangerous climate change".

Australia, with one of the world's highest per capita emissions, "has gone from leadership to free-rider status in climate diplomacy", it said.

The country was on course for emissions to rise 12-18 per cent above 2000 levels after scrapping the carbon price in 2014, compared with the promise of a 5 per cent reduction by decade's end.

A separate report on Thursday by energy consultants Pitt & Sherry said Australia's emissions had jumped 1.6 per cent in the first nine months after the scrapping of the carbon price in June 2014, led by a rebound in brown coal-fired electricity production. Emissions from coal, petroleum and natural gas use are all rising for the first time since November 2011.

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Australia, the US and the European Union should be aiming for deep carbon cuts by 2030 and zero emissions by 2050, while China – the largest emitter – should bring forward its planned peak, the African report said.

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While the report's main focus was on the energy needs of a continent home to 600 million people without access to electricity, it noted Africa has a keen interest in reducing global warming risks given its exposure to extreme weather and widespread poverty.

Two-year-old Aden Salaad, in 2011, a refugee in Dadaab, Kenya. Africa has a keen interest in reducing global warming risks given its exposure to extreme weather and widespread poverty. Photo: AP

"No region has done less to contribute to the climate crisis, but no region will pay a higher price for failure to tackle it," Mr Annan said in the report.

Paris pressure

The Abbott government is likely to face mounting international pressure to do more to curb carbon emissions in the run-up to the Paris climate summit at the end of the year. Australia is the only nation to remove a price on carbon and this week the House of Representatives voted to cut the renewable energy target for 2020 by about 20 per cent.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt, though, said the government was taking "significant action to tackle climate change".

The $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund bought 47 million tonnes of carbon abatement at its first auction in April at an average price of $13.95 per tonne.

"We've contracted around four times the entire amount of emissions reduction that occurred during the life of Labor's failed carbon tax – and we're achieving abatement at around one per cent of the cost," the spokesman said.

Larissa Waters, Greens climate spokeswoman on climate change, said the Abbott government had been "ignoring the science", leaving it increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.

Australia copped 36 questions, the most any other country, including additional queries from the USA, China, Brazil, Fiji, South Africa, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand and the UK, according to WWF-Australia.

"There is clear concern that Australia is not lifting its weight to help limit global warming and the government's actions don't match their words," Kellie Caught, WWF-Australia's manager for climate change, said.

Countries were most concerned about the scrapping of the carbon price, with questions about funding and safeguards for its substitute, the Emissions Reduction Fund, WWF said.

Carbon price

The African panel – whose members include Michel Camdessus, a former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Irish rock singer and activist Bob Geldof and Graca Machel, Mozambican politician and widow of Nelson Mandela – called in its report for nations to introduce a "stringent" carbon price.

"The credible starting point for a 2015 carbon price in rich countries is around 21 euros [$30.60 a tonne], rising to 41 euros [$59.80] by 2020 and at annual increments of around 7 per cent thereafter," the report said.

Australia's carbon price was at $24.15 a tonne at June 30, 2014, when its repeal came into effect.

The panel also took aim at support for fossil fuels, which in Australia's case amounted to $US3.5 billion ($4.53 billion) in 2013, the report said, adding that their logic was "difficult to unravel".

"Either the new reserves discovered with the support of state subsidies will be left in the ground, which would constitute a waste of public finance during a period of acute fiscal stress," it said. "Or the reserves will be used, in which case dangerous climate change is guaranteed."

The report also said coal companies in Australia, the EU and the US were "campaigning vigorously against climate action".